On Fri, 14 Oct 2005, Bryce Harrington wrote:
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 18:13:38 -0700 From: Bryce Harrington <bryce@...961...> To: bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> Cc: Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...>, Inkscape is a vector graphics editor inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Proposed changes to Keyboard shortcuts
On Fri, Oct 14, 2005 at 08:34:22PM -0300, bulia byak wrote:
On 10/14/05, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...961...> wrote:
It is a very common operation, but nearly all the zoom operations are already mapped to the number keys and to +/- anyway, so in practice I find the zoom tool itself is not that needed.
True for professional users. Newbies may still use Zoom tool quite often.
I would argue that similarly, Newbies would be using the Zoom tool via the icon, rather than the keyboard shortcut, but I think neither of us have any data to support our positions.
What are your proposals for mappings?
Like I said - just make a complete profile with Xara keys. Of course it's not 1:1 because some things have no correspondence, but we can try to be as close as possible. This will (1) solve the F1 problem and (2) be a first step towards the grand Xara/Inkscape merge that we all talk so much about recently. I think these advantages are well worth it. But just uprooting F1 and some adjacent keys is not enough justification for a change, IMHO.
Well, that's a good proposal, but I was thinking more along the lines of alternate proposals for those two particular keys.
One could also equally well argue the inverse - for Xara/Inkscape merge considerations, the primary key mappings should start migrating in that direction, and that if people wish to retain the current mappings, then that should be the one done as an overlay profile.
Secondly, if something matters even to a minority, we cannot bluntly disregard this minority. We are not a commercial entity who might afford to do that.
Of course, this same logic could be applied to Alan; he may be the minority, and rejecting his patch and suggestions is equivalent to disregarding his minority.
Please realize that by making the process of proposing keyboard changes be such a gauntlet to run
What are you talking about, Bryce? Did I make it too diffucult for Alan to propose his changes here? Nope, in fact he did so on my urging. Do I have to abstain from criticizing his proposal? Why?
Actually yes, IMHO, you are making it difficult to propose changes. Alan's original goal was simply to propose that F1 should be mapped to Help. A lot of applications use this key for help, so it's not that exotic of an idea; indeed, it makes Inkscape more conformant with GUI software in general.
He had initially brought this up back in July. He'd commented that there were usability regressions and you challenged him to specify them. Among his suggestions was that the F1 key was mis-mapped, compared with what Illustrator/Freehand users were used to. His You rebuffed and dismissed his suggestion. You commented something about Xara keymapping compatibility being more important to you than Illustrator. He indicated at the time that it was difficult to make these suggestions because he felt like he was being ignored.
Later, he tried again.
At this point, if it were me trying to get a patch in, I would throw up my hands in frustration.
I'll take this opportunity to apologise for ranting on IRC #inkscape the other day which was the verbal equivalent of throwing my hands up in frustration. In hindsight I could have tried to be less confrontational as it clearly raised the ante and made Bulia even less interested in considering my suggestion.
However, Alan was a trooper.
Compared to some other open source projects Inkscape is still a very considerate group of people and I knew from past experience that bulia comes across very forcefully in the written word but also that he will represent his views again more clearly and more straightforward if asked to do so.
Bryce has covered various issues which would have been difficult for me to bring up without risking making the situation seem more hostile.
If anything this discussion shows some of us care very much about what keybindings we have, but any users of vi or emacs could tell you that already.
We know Alan's motivation here is that his interest is in _Illustrator_ mappings, not Xara, so your demand is going to be completely a non-starter for him I'm sure.
Yes, Adobe Illustrator is my primary bias because it has a large market share and brand recognition. If I were going to put Inkscape on my CV I'd certainly put Illustrator with it so readers would know what I was talking about.
Having said that the F1 hangup goes back to windows 95 when I badly needed and regularly used searchable help (and continues today in Gnome but if I am forced to use the Help I usually end up trying to think of ways to improve the interface instead).
Honestly, I wonder if all of this is less about keyboard mappings and more just a big clash of personalities.
As stated above I could have been more diplomatic but I did feel like Bulia had staked his claim and the longer I left things the harder they would be to change, having previously had severe difficulty convincing another program to try and change things.
You two have tended to be polarized on issues you both care about.
it is surprisingly how often us butting heads ends well, and sometimes arguements or "discussions" are necessary but a less painful approach would certainly be preferable.
between people who have strong preferences one way or another, and if we can all develop good skills for finding compromises we will succeed. If we frustrate each other, things may fragment. Remember it was hard headedness and failure to be able to find good compromises that led to the Inkscape/Sodipodi split in the first place. If we are going to achieve a merge, we are going to have to get good at doing exactly the opposite.
Thanks
Alan